It was now no longer an effete Sikh administration
that breakers of the law had to deal with, but the strong right arm and
warlike guile of the British officer, backed up by men who meant
fighting.
* * * * *
It was now the spring of 1848, and great events were brewing in the
Punjab. It was the lull between the two stormy gusts of the First and
Second Sikh Wars. To us at this date it does not seem to require the
omniscience of a prophet, prophesying after the event, to discover that
the settlement arrived at after the First Sikh War contained most of the
possible elements of an unpermanent nature. The Punjab was to remain a
Sikh province, with the infant son of the Lion of the Punjab as its
Sovereign; but the real ruler of the kingdom of the Sikhs was a British
officer, Henry Lawrence, at the head of a council of regency. To support
his authority British bayonets overawed the capital of the Punjab, and
assumed the mien of those who hold their place by right of conquest.
Attached to, but really at the head of, the minor centres of
administration, were men like Herbert Edwardes, Abbott, Taylor, George
Lawrence, Nicholson, and Agnew; the stamp of high-souled pioneer who
though alone, unguarded, and hundreds of miles from succour, by sheer
force of character makes felt the weight of British influence in favour
of just and cleanly government. And acting thus honourably they were
naturally detested by the lower class of venal rulers, whose idea of
government was, and is at all times and on all occasions, by persuasion,
force, or oppression, to squeeze dry the people committed to their
charge.
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